My friend who has been my project manager for a long time recently wrote something to address fake negative reviews about me. I want to thank him publicly and appreciate the time he’s invested in working with me.

I will not add on to what he wrote because I believe it contains the gist of what I wrote earlier this month.

Hi, my name is Peter, and I’ve had the privilege of knowing Ewen Chia personally. In fact, I’ve worked with him for a long time. You might think I’m just trying to defend my long time friend here by saying what they are writing is false. However I want you to see a deeper pattern that’s going on among the very people who are disparaging Ewen.

Here’s what I’ve noticed.

The things they write about him and my products are fake

I know this is subjective. You may not believe this. So let me proceed straight to the next point.

They promote their own offers

If you actually read to the end of the reviews, you will see that these people are promoting their own offers. Not just any offer though. I’ve noticed that most, if not all of them, are promoting Wealthy Affiliate. Which brings me to my next point.

Ewen is not the only guy they’re writing bad stuff about

I browsed through the websites of these people who wrote bad stuff about Ewen and I saw that Ewen is not the only guy who’s been a victim of fake negative reviews. In fact, I see a lot of credible internet marketers as well getting their heat.

They’re clearly riding on his name to get attention

The name Ewen Chia gets a lot of traffic on the internet. So what’s an easy way to get traffic? Leverage on somebody’s fame. They’re basically leveraging on his name to get views on their website, where they in turn disparage him in hopes to win over their readers to join their own program (Wealthy Affiliate for most of them).

Is this something Wealthy Affiliate is teaching their students to do? To write bad stuff about internet marketers just to get downlines for themselves?

I remember how quite a few of my students were so impacted by what they learnt from me. One of them is Vietnamese and despite not being able to speak or understand English, she still generated income online.

I also had the honor and privilege to meet her again personally at an event where I was speaking at.

One of them even mentioned me in a post she wrote:

So to end off this post, I just want to point out that big companies like Apple and Samsung have their own raving fans as well as haters. What works for you may or may not also work for someone else. We are all different.

Recently I have been seeing a lot of content on the internet about me being a scammer. Well I had a closer look at the content, and what I saw was really despicable. Let me explain.

Here’s what I can see. Other people are siphoning and leveraging on my name, Ewen Chia, just to get traffic to their website. The content on their website is falsely disparaging my credibility. However, the majority of general consumers do not know well enough, and so, they will believe pretty much almost anything they see on the internet. In turn, these website owners will promote their own offer and product. This is certainly a strategy that has been around for a long time, and I am not the only victim. Loads of credible internet marketers and coaches out there have been on the receiving end of fake negative reviews. Beware of negative reviews and the people behind them! Here are a few of the culprits:

Ian Pribyl of StoppingScams.com

He writes about scam products on the internet but his website Stopping Scams is a big internet marketing scam in itself. He has even been called out by fellow internet marketer Desmond Ong. (I know Desmond personally. He’s a nice guy. Certainly not a scammer.) Ian writes fake reviews about various internet marketers’ products, gives them bad ratings, and in turn promotes his own offer as a “credible” alternative, Wealthy Affiliate.

Roderick “Nathaniell” of One More Cup Of Coffee

Like Ian, he has written a lot of fake negative reviews about me as well as other credible marketers, giving my products a dismal ratings. He ends off his reviews by promoting Wealthy Affiliate.

Actually there are more like Ian and Nathaniel, and they all do the same thing. They write negative reviews about other marketers’ products, and in turn promote their own Wealthy Affiliate link. This strategy is unethical but it works, because these Wealthy Affiliates have managed to fool a lot of people out there.

I am thankful that there are some who are a bit more discerning and not easily fooled by negative reviews. Here’s what I read on an “Ewen Chia product review” which I found on YouTube:

(“Black hat marketing” is just another way of saying unethical marketing.)

I want to thank the people who believe in me and the value that I give on a regular basis.

Note: I am not saying ALL Wealthy Affiliates are practicing this unethical marketing method. What I am saying is most of the people I’ve found who are writing fake negative reviews about me are promoting Wealthy Affiliate.

So before you come to your own conclusion, just remember that you can find pretty much everything and anything on the internet. You cannot take whatever information you find online at face value.

One of the skills I’m best known for is “Affiliate Marketing”, the business model of making commissions through the marketing and selling of other companies’ products and services.

It’s with Affiliate Marketing in mind that I’m writing this article, which is long overdue in my opinion.

Have you ever searched the search engines and saw websites ranking for “author name + scam”, “author name + product name” or “product name reviews” etc.?

This is an affiliate marketing strategy known as “Fake Reviews” and involves the websites or web pages writing largely fake and biased negative reviews of a person or product, while promoting themselves or their chosen products.

Meaning, they are actually doing all this to MAKE MONEY from another product (product B) while tearing down the competitor’s product (product A).

It happens everywhere, not only in the Internet Marketing niche.

It’s a strategy that works as many people are misled by and fall for these “reviews”. So they keep appearing and continuing.

Most of these website owners also employ black hat tactics to benefit themselves.

They tend to target popular brands and products – simply because there’s traffic from people searching for them.

Lets look at how you can spot fake reviews so that you’re in the know…

How To Spot A Fake Review – 3 Tell Tale Signs

Tell Tale Sign #1: Targeting Popular Gurus, Brands And Products

Fake reviews are often targeted at popular gurus, brands and products because they have huge traffic and search volume, ie. demand. In fact, this is the only way the strategy can be effective.

Tell Tale Sign #2: Bashing One Product To Promote Another

If someone is bashing a product or products unfairly, only to recommend another “better” product that he or she is making a commission on, then it’s positively a fake review.

Some of these website owners also go as far as to promote themselves as a more credible and trustworthy alternative, as the other guru or brand is seen in a bad light based on their “reviews”.

Tell Tale Sign #3: Multiple Search Engine Rankings

As mentioned, the way this works is by targeting popular keywords that describe their competitors’ names and products.

They then try to rank for these multiple keywords on the search engines to get traffic.

Think about it, why would another website try so hard to rank and get traffic for OTHER people’s names and product names on the search engines?

The very fact that they are doing this shows you they are using fake reviews as a strategy to make money.

Hope this article will give you a deeper insight and clearer perspective when you next look at a review.

I have been receiving many questions from my students and customers about how they can generate traffic to their website. What is shocking to me is that some of them do not even know that they have to generate traffic.

Traffic is the lifeblood of any business. You may have the most beautiful website, or a website that is touted to have an excellent conversion rate, but if your website does not get any traffic, then you are not going to get any sales. A website without traffic is like a shopping mall without visitors.

There are two main types of traffic.

There’s free traffic and paid traffic.

Paid traffic gets you traffic instantly in most cases. However, you will have to continually invest in paid traffic in order to get that stream of traffic.

Free traffic may not get you traffic immediately, but its main purpose is to bring you a steady stream of traffic in the long run.

Either method you choose involves getting your website link to your target audience and potential buyers. I will briefly run through a few traffic methods in this post.

Facebook Ads

Facebook has approximately 2 billion users. You have a huge market to tap into right there!

If you’re not advertising on Facebook, you’re missing out on a huge potential goldmine. There are many ways you can advertise on Facebook, but for starters, you should create what is known as a news feed ad.

These ads show up on the Facebook news feed of people you target. You target people based on their interests.

For example, if you are selling a fitness course, then you may opt to target people who like fitness experts such as Ashley Borden, Jillian Michaels or Tony Horton.

You could also target people who like fitness clubs such as California Fitness or Fitness First. I recommend you keep your budget to $10 a day.

You can send your traffic to a squeeze page, a landing page, or your own fan page.

Just bear in mind that sending traffic to your own fan page is typically cheaper than sending people out of Facebook.

Email Solo Ads

Email solo ads are ads you buy from other email marketers.

You pay the marketer to send an email to their list, promoting your own squeeze page so that you can build a list too.

This form of traffic is really the most targeted traffic you can get if you are building an email list. However, solo ads are most popular in the internet marketing niche. You may find solo ad vendors selling solo ads for other niches, but those may not be as popular as solo ads for the internet marketing niche.

Solo ad vendors sell solo ads based on a certain number of clicks currently.

For example, they may charge $50 for 100 clicks. This means that for $50, the vendor will send an ad to his or her email list and ensure that your link in the email is clicked at least 100 times.

Most vendors will deliver a few extra clicks or what is known as “over delivery” (OD), so you’ll effectively be playing slightly less than $0.50 a click.

If you intend to buy solo ads, make sure you have a click tracking script so that you can track the number of clicks you’re receiving as well as the number of subscriber optins you’re getting.

This way, you’ll know if the solo ad vendor’s clicks are converting well for you and can test your ROI.

Blog Commenting

This method may be old school, but it still works very effectively.

The idea here is to visit blogs of people writing about your niche topic and leave a comment with your URL. Don’t just blatantly write “this post is great”. Write a constructive comment to show that you read the blog post and you know your stuff.

Build rapport not only with the author but also the other readers that the blog gets.

When they see that what you’re writing makes a lot of sense, then you’ll not only get their respect but you could also very well get a visit from them on your website.

Wall Jacking

This method works very similarly to blog commenting.

You’re using Facebook as your fan page and leaving comments on posts from fan pages related to yours. Like what I wrote above, you have to build rapport and write something constructive.

However, Facebook posts are more likely to go viral.

Hence, just one comment from you could go a long way. Now besides leaving comments on posts, you could also like other people’s comments, especially if you think that they will be interested in your fan page.

When you like another person’s comment, there’s a chance that he or she may click through to see what your fan page is about. When that happens, you could very well get the person’s like on your fan page. This is a really effective way to growing your fan base steadily.

I hope this post has been eye-opening for you. Go out there and take action.

Pick one of these methods mentioned here and start driving traffic to your website or fan page. I look forward to hearing your success stories!